Or so it seems, based on this interview with Federal Trade Commission “consumer protection” official Richard Cleland (conducted by freelance journalist Ed Champion). 

Guidelines scheduled to take effect Dec. 1 would force bloggers who endorse products to different disclosure requirements than traditional publishers. Say you review a book (or an MP3 player or a DVD or a new shampoo) on a blog (or Twitter or Facebook). If you received the book gratis, and kept it, federal bureaucrats may think you “endorsed” the book. Which means, for Uncle Sam’s purposes, the blogger would have to disclose that you got the book as compensation and are, in effect, publishing an advertisement for it. Which means regulations apply.

Champion asked Cleland

[W]hat?s the difference between an individual employed at a newspaper
assigned to cover a beat and an individual blogger covering a beat of
her own volition?

?We are distinguishing between who receives the compensation and who
does the review,? said Cleland. ?In the case where the newspaper
receives the book and it allows the reviewer to review it, it?s still
the property of the newspaper. Most of the newspapers have very strict
rules about that and on what happens to those products.?

In the case of books, Cleland saw no problem with a blogger
receiving a book, provided there wasn?t a linked advertisement to buy
the book and that the blogger did not keep the book after he had
finished reviewing it. Keeping the book would, from Cleland?s
standpoint, count as ?compensation? and require a disclosure.

Cleland truly doesn’t understand, well, a lot. (Beginning with the First Amendment and the Interwebs.) The rules suggest any review is an endorsement — plenty of authors/artists/product developers would beg to differ. And as Virginia Postrel points out, Instapundit Glenn Reynolds would be a certain target of the new rules.

Notes Ian Paul at PCWorld:

Richard Cleland, assistant director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer
Protection, says the regulatory body is more concerned with how
advertisers pay for endorsements and reviews rather than the actions of
individual bloggers and other online types, according to IDG News Service.
That being said, the FTC can levy fines of up to $11,000, so if you’re
a big time blogger or prominent social media type (which can be anybody
these days) it’s potentially a lot cheaper to play by the rules.

The upshot: Obama’s eager-beaver regulators plan to trash the First Amendment. I can’t wait to see this whole agenda shredded by the courts.